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with a curious expression; one she’d never seen before that wasn’t quite puzzlement, nor was it exactly interest or suspicion. It seemed to be all three.
    ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
    ‘I thought we would make a run for the Eye of Terror.’
    He chuckled. ‘Do not call it that. Only mortal star-sailors, frightened of their own shadows, call it that. We simply call it the Eye, or the Wound, or… home. Are you so keen to drift into those polluted tides? Many Navigators lose their sanity, you know. It is one of the reasons so many of our vessels rely on sorcerers as guides in the Sea of Souls.’
    ‘It is the last place in the galaxy I would like to go.’ Octavia narrowed her eyes as she smiled. ‘You’re avoiding the question. Just like every other time I ask it.’
    ‘We cannot return to the Eye,’ Talos replied. ‘I am not avoiding the question. You know why I am reluctant to sail there.’
    She did know. At least, she could make a decent guess. ‘The eldar dreams,’ she said, not quite a question.
    ‘Yes. The eldar dreams. Worse than before, now. I will not return there just to die.’
    Octavia was quiet again for a time. ‘I’m glad you’re awake again.’
    Talos didn’t answer her. He didn’t understand why he’d been sent here. For several seconds, he merely glanced around the chamber, listening to the ripple of the water, the thrumming pulse of the hull’s rumble, and…
    …and the two heartbeats.
    One was Octavia’s, a steady thump, thump, thump of wet thunder. The other was a muffled stutter, almost quick enough to be a buzz. Both came from within her body.
    ‘I am a fool,’ he said, rising to his feet in a snarl of armour joints.
    ‘Talos?’
    He drew in a breath, seeking to quell a surge of anger. His fingers were trembling, the micro-servos in his knuckles whirred as his hands clenched into fists. Had he not been so weary and his senses so dulled, he’d have heard the two heartbeats immediately.
    ‘Talos?’ she asked again. ‘Talos?’
    He walked from her chamber without a word.

III
    HOMECOMING
    As soon as the door opened, Septimus realised he was probably going to die.
    He had half a second to draw breath before the hand was at his throat, and another half-second to croak out a denial. The gauntlet closed around his neck with enough strength to choke off any breath, let alone speech, and he struggled as he was lifted off the decking.
    ‘I warned you,’ the intruder said. Septimus tried to swallow, and gagged instead. In response, the Night Lord hurled him across the chamber. He hit hard, crashing against the wall and sinking to the floor in a heap of slack, shivering limbs. Blood marked the black iron where his head had struck.
    ‘I warned you,’ the warrior said again, filling the room with the sound of armour joints and bootsteps. ‘Was I somehow not clear enough? Was my warning something to be ignored merely because I was unconscious for fifty-five nights?’
    He hauled Septimus up by the hair, and threw him against the opposite wall. The slave went down again, this time without a sound. The warrior kept advancing, kept speaking, his voice twisted into machine-like impassivity by his helm’s vocaliser grille. ‘Did I perhaps fail to express my meaning in absolute terms? Is that it? Is that where this savage breakdown in communication has occurred?’
    Septimus struggled to rise. For the first time in his life, he drew a weapon on his master. At least, he tried to. With a snort that m ight or m ight not have been a laugh, the towering warrior thudded a boot into his slave’s side – not a battlefield kick, but rather the scuffing of refuse from underfoot. Still, the modest, messy chamber echoed with the twig-snaps of breaking ribs. Septimus swore through clenched teeth, reaching for the pistol he’d dropped.
    ‘You son of a…’ he began, but his master cut him off.
    ‘Let us not compound disobedience with disrespect.’ The Night Lord took two steps forward.